


moving up to higher ground

by sapphicish



Category: Doom Patrol (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bonding, Gen, and this is a story about how i love them both so much, girls and their 64 personalities just wanna have fun, i love rita farr so much and i love jane so much, this was written before 1x06 happened so like...heavily au in some places
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 04:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18203771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: Rita knows several of Jane's personalities better than she knows others. She even gets along with some of them – it would be silly to suggest that she either knows most of them or enjoys the company of all the ones shedoesknow, but she does truly, sincerely like some of them. When there's sixty-four personalities all with their separate abilities in one body, most of who are insane or violent or just veryannoying,Rita thinks that's quite a feat to achieve.One that should even be applauded, really.(or: four Moments™ between Rita and some of Jane's personalities, and one Moment™ between Rita and Jane)





	moving up to higher ground

**Author's Note:**

> in light of 1x06 this is all very different but like...it's fine it's fun and i'm having a very bad horrible week (/month) and i didn't really proofread this much or anything so
> 
> anyway, rita farr is a lesbian and you can quote me on that

**i. hammerhead**

  
  


The first time they watch one of her films together, just the two of them, it's because Larry is having one of his bad days (well, worse days) and the Chief is gone for a week doing what he does best and, well, there's _Cliff,_ the most recent addition to their little family, but he hasn't taken a single step out of his room for some time now. And it isn't that she hasn't _tried_ to reach out. Rita always tries. Within reason. But can she be blamed for giving up? Absolutely not. There's only so many times you can talk to the same damn robot standing in front of the same damn window before you realize that it's absolutely pointless. A waste of time, really.

And so, so depressing. And Rita doesn't do depressing. _Can't_ do depressing. Depressing makes her insides feel like they're turning inside out and then _she's_ turning, flopping onto the floor in a pile of disgusting mush, unable to pull herself back together until the following day when she's had a good rest as a pool of horrible goo.

So. Yes. She gives up on him. There's nothing she can do, anyway.

Jane had returned a few days earlier, not as Jane but something else entirely, some sort of red-eyed creature with claws that stalked the halls and hissed at Rita whenever she came near. 

Rita can take a hint, so she promptly decides to avoid catching even the slightest glimpses of her, or it, or _whatever._

(That and Larry had informed her in no uncertain terms that it was insane and possibly a cannibal because it had threatened to eat him not once, not twice, but three times, all with various and disturbing details.)

Suffering a bout of insomnia in a big, empty house full of people who refuse to talk to each other is more difficult than she first thought it would be, but she manages. Curls up at the end of a long sofa in a dark room with nothing but a candle on a table and the black-and-white flickers from the television to light the room, a huge bucket of popcorn tucked safely in her arms, quietly echoing her character's lines back to her weeping face.

“I sometimes think I might die from it, all this unhappiness...but then I remember you, I remember us...”

“Hey,” a voice says sharply in the doorway, and Rita jumps, scrambles for the remote to pause, taking a few seconds to stare at the pieces of popcorn scattered on the floor before she looks up to do the same with Jane.

Jane, of course, doesn't look nearly as apologetic or abashed as she would like.

Rita sighs, sinks back into the couch again and pulls her legs out, away from where they've been tucked underneath herself, crosses them neatly at the knee and selfconsciously reaches up to touch the rollers in her hair. She's all a little less put-together than she'd like, because it's not like she'd been expecting company. “You _startled_ me.”

Jane rolls her eyes, and Rita realizes it isn't Jane a split second before she speaks. “Boo-fucking-hoo.”

Rita inhales slowly, then lets it out. And again. One more time, just in case. “Hello, Hammerhead.”

Hammerhead sneers in response, walks over and throws herself on the couch, nearly kicking over Rita's bucket of popcorn when she swings her legs up to take as much space as possible.

Rita closes her eyes. _Breathe._ “What's wrong?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Well, you're here. With me. I would say I'm near the top of the very long list of people you despise, so – what's wrong? What happened to Jane? And the one with the...” She curls her fingers a little, to mimic claws.

Hammerhead scoffs. “Stop that, you look like a fucking idiot. Jane's not here, and neither is Annis. Now are we watching this shit or what?”

Rita rolls her eyes, shifts off to the side—as far away from Hammerhead as possible, naturally—and gives a particularly reluctant nod. “I can start it over for you, if you like.”

For _you,_ she says, but they both know she doesn't mind at all.

(Sometimes, when she watches them alone in her bedroom when she's having a bad day, she replays certain scenes over and over and over again. Looks at that wonderful, lovely face and those bright, happy eyes, perfectly in her element. Listens to the voice. Soft and lyrical and beautiful. Sometimes she cries. Most of the time, she cries.)

Hammerhead folds herself up in this tight uncomfortable-looking knot of limbs, head against the arm of the couch, and waves a hand. “Whatever.”

Rita rewinds, presses play.

Hammerhead is a surprisingly—and Rita _means_ surprisingly, as in she has to refrain from pausing every three minutes just to make sure Hammerhead isn't secretly holding a knife to kill her with or something—good person to watch things with when there's no one else around; maybe it's because there's less people to irritate her into firing retorts and insults or – heaven forbid – start throwing _furniture,_ like the last time Hammerhead had come out while watching one of her films.

It's the most peaceful and quiet she's ever seen Hammerhead, even though she won't stop twitching and moving and stretching and cracking her knuckles and muttering to herself and taking it upon herself at least once every five minutes to inform Rita that 'these lines makes no goddamn sense' or 'this movie is shit' or 'are you sure you were only thirty when you made this movie because you look forty'.

(Rita does have to pause it for that, because the only way she knows she'll be able to get through the rest of it with Hammerhead there is a lot more popcorn.)

“That was fucking stupid,” Hammerhead says after, when Rita's character goes mad and jumps into the ocean and it ends, “and depressing.”

“I know,” Rita says, reaches over to pat Hammerhead on the knee. She knows her mistake before she has an opportunity to stop it, but it seems that she's pulled back quickly enough because all Hammerhead does is glare at her. And spit a little, but she has bad aim. “Next time, we can watch something with less...death. This one, though...this one has always been my favorite.”

Hammerhead's brows furrow. When Rita doesn't elaborate, she groans, long and drawn-out. “For fuck's sake. Why? Oh, Rita, please tell me, I'm just _dying_ to know.”

Rita smiles faintly. Hammerhead would have up and left already if she wasn't curious. “Everyone always said it was my first film that I really...broke through. They could see me, all of me, and they couldn't get enough. Isn't that lovely? I was nominated for a Golden Globe because of it, you know.”

“Yeah,” Hammerhead mumbles, unfolds herself and shakes out her limbs and heads for the door. “You've mentioned it like a hundred times. Just shut the fuck _up_ already.”

“Wait,” Rita calls after her, even though she knows it's probably a bad idea. “Are you...well?”

Hammerhead glances back at her oddly. “What?”

“You were walking around this place with _claws._ Or, well, someone was. What was all of that about?”

“We had a bad start to the new year. Black Annis got pissed. That's all.”

Rita watches her for a moment; watches the way Hammerhead's fingers flex against her legs, the way she looks at the door, the way she's going to turn and leave soon even if Rita tries to call her back again, and whenever someone tries to stop her from doing something she wants to do, well—that never ends well.

Sometimes, Rita would like a little more from the people around her. A plea to watch her films again, or watch a different one, or to stay up all night and keep watching and keep listening and keep talking – oh, at this point, she'd even accept a 'sleep well' or a 'sweet dreams' or a 'that was really a truly lovely movie, Rita, and I'm genuinely pleased to have seen it'.

She knows she's not going to get that from Hammerhead. Or Jane, even. Or _any_ of the others, most likely.

“Well,” she says, “here's to hoping the next one is better, then.”

Hammerhead looks at her – then she gives her a very obnoxious, very rude, very _vulgar_ gesture and leaves without a word, and Rita is alone in the dark again.

Sometimes, Rita thinks, she'd like for the ache in her chest to be a little less aching.

But not everyone has good taste, and at least Hammerhead had sat the entire way through, which was far more than Rita had expected and it also came with far less violence than she'd expected, so she sits there for a moment, watching the shadows flicker, watching the candlelight and waiting for that lonely little ache to turn dull and small.

She remembers to thank it quietly when it does, because there's just as much a chance that it might grow big and sharp and keep growing, consuming her until she's forced to rush away into her room to recuperate.

When she's done with that, Rita takes up the remote, rewinds, and presses play.

  
  


**ii. babydoll**

  
  


Rita knows several of Jane's personalities better than she knows others. She even gets along with some of them – it would be silly to suggest that she either knows most of them or enjoys the company of all the ones she _does_ know, but she does truly, sincerely like some of them. When there's sixty-four personalities all with their separate abilities in one body, most of who are insane or violent or just very _annoying,_ Rita thinks that's quite a feat to achieve.

One that should even be applauded, really.

Babydoll is complicated, refusing to believe that Rita and the thing Rita turns into sometimes just happens to be the same person-and-thing, bursting into loud messy tears when she's told otherwise and soothed only when Rita recites her favorite lines from The Crimson Lady, pacing back and forth in front of her and turning sharply on a heel so that her skirts whirl out in a colorful fan around her legs. Babydoll laughs and laughs, then, and forgets all about her terror. 

(Once, Rita's face begins to slip in front of her, and it's too late to reign it in before Babydoll catches on and stares, mouth dropping in horror, and then she's screaming and screaming and Rita is falling and falling and—well, that had been a very bad day for everyone.)

Babydoll refuses to let anyone else out, today. From the start, the very start when Rita had stepped out of her bedroom, it had been all pink bows and giggling and being dragged through the corridors, and now she's in the kitchen, rummaging through a cabinet, absolutely starved because she hasn't had a chance to eat anything because – _Babydoll._

“What's—“

“ _Shh,_ ” Rita hisses, drags Larry deeper into the kitchen and shuts the door quietly behind him, shoving a hand over his face where she knows his mouth is under all the bandages. She touches him very rarely because she knows it can always be a _risk,_ but it's one she's willing to take in the moment.

“Ow,” he says blandly, batting at her hands, but she knows better than to believe it. She's gentle and he isn't that sensitive, not anymore. “What—what are you— _Rita,_ what's going on here?”

“I'm playing hide and seek,” she says solemnly, knows it sounds ridiculous the moment she hears it leave her mouth but she can't take it back and, anyway, it's the truth. Sort of.

Babydoll is incredibly bad at finding people. She doesn't have to hide in a closet or under the bed or outside somewhere, she just has to be in a room that Babydoll isn't and that's, apparently, enough.

Larry looks at her for one long, even moment.

“Don't—“ she starts, but it's too late.

Larry snorts. Laughs. Laughs harder, leaning over against the counter, head in his hands.

Herein lies the problem. Babydoll is awful at finding people, yes, that much is true.

She also has very keen hearing.

The door bursts open, bouncing off the wall, and the girl rushes in, laughing delightedly and flinging her arms around Rita. “I found you! I found you, Rita!”

Larry is still laughing.

Rita closes her eyes, stomach growling ravenously, and sighs. She wraps her arms around Babydoll in turn despite her irritation, because it's difficult not to.

“So you did.”

  
  


**iii. the hangman's beautiful daughter**

  
  


Rita is gifted a painting, once. The Hangman's Daughter delivers it to her door, knocks quietly – three brief times every minute – until she pulls herself together enough to crawl from her bed and answer, swallowing heavily against the nebulous feeling that threatens to send her spilling out over the floor again. Even now she can feel her hands beginning to slip, and her face, and the back of one shoulder, but she holds onto the doorknob and breathes until she feels it all still.

It doesn't help to see the painting. It's beautiful, vibrant, all bright colors and her standing in the middle of it, proud and straight-backed and smiling, small enough that Larry might resist getting in a jab or two about the endless depth of her ego if she hangs it up somewhere.

“You're not having a very good week,” the Hangman's Daughter says gently, her eyes swimming with unshed tears. It's always made Rita uncomfortable, never more than now where she's half hiding behind the cracked door. “I'm sorry. I hope this makes you feel better.”

Rita tries to speak, but the words emerge garbled. It's an understatement. She's having a very bad week – she has many of them, but she usually goes undisturbed until they pass. Everyone knows better than to come knocking when she won't even step out for food. (And if it's not the Chief that delivers said food to her door for her, it's always Larry, and if not Larry, then it'll be Jane, but it's always someone, she never goes fully hungry.)

 _Thank you,_ she wants to say, or _go away, please go away, please please please,_ or _I'm sorry you have to see me like this, at my very worst._

The Hangman's Daughter smiles tremulously at her, leaves the painting against the door, and departs. Rita watches her go down the hall; she can't reach for the painting before she's collapsing in on herself again, a heavy mass that slams the door shut. She hears the painting clatter to the floor outside, forgets all about it in her misery for the next three days until she opens it and sees it, still there, untouched.

Rita hangs it just next to her bed, and stares at it until her eyes burn.

When Larry sees it, he laughs, but doesn't poke fun.

That matters almost as much as the painting itself.

  
  


**iv. flit**

  
  


It's right out of the blue. She's having a perfectly nice chat with the Harlot, who's learned to behave around her because the first time she ever met Rita she'd tried to grope at her and Rita had panicked and turned into a stream of ooze that flooded the halls, and just before that she'd been talking to Silvertongue, and Hammerhead, and Penny, and before Penny it had been the one who didn't talk but was a spectacularly good listener, even when all it did was just crawl on the walls and ceilings and spit sometimes like a wild animal when it heard something it didn't like.

Rita knows it's because of Paraguay, because something _happened_ in Paraguay, because Cliff and Jane aren't speaking – though Cliff is trying his nonexistent little heart out, of course – and Jane hasn't even been here since they made the return, not once, it's always been someone else, usually someone angry or someone who pretended like Rita's questions didn't even exist and she'd be standing there being talked over or ignored or attacked.

She stops asking once she realizes that it's going nowhere and only serves to endanger her, and as much as she wants to know all the details, it isn't worth it to be set on fire or electrocuted or blown up or everything else they're very, very capable of doing.

Rita has grown long used to the way the air flickers before a change, so she waits it out, the few seconds it takes for the new one to adjust; the red dress is gone, and the gorgeous lipstick, and now it's just –

– just –

Rita is standing on a beach.

It's very startling, the sudden change of _everything,_ and she's only ever been teleported by Flit once before but the feeling is sickly familiar, making her stomach flip-flop and her head spin a little. It doesn't help that it's very, very hot. They're standing on hot sand under a hot sun in front of glimmering waters, and all around them people are running and laughing and tanning themselves under umbrellas, on towels laid out in the sand. A lot of people. Too many people.

A girl no older than ten races past her followed by a boy of the same age, giggling and shrieking and tripping over themselves in the chase.

Rita blinks, breathes in. _The person who is breathing is me. The person who is breathing is me._ Chief taught her this trick, or rather some version of it that she'd improved upon, but it isn't working now, it hasn't worked particularly well in a while since the disaster outing and especially, especially not now – 

“What are we doing here?” She hears herself say the words very faintly, like from a considerable distance. The people are so loud. Everything is so loud, and she feels her foot begin to slip and sink, melting against the sand. She recognizes her surroundings very vaguely. She'd been taken here once, before the incident, arm-in-arm with a gorgeous man with tall broad shoulders and a perfect jawline, very rich and courteous and kind and he'd been nothing she wanted. They were all nothing she wanted.

It's changed. Quite a lot. But it remains familiar, a little, on the outskirts of her mind.

It's jarring. She doesn't always remember a lot before—

Well.

Before.

Flit looks at Rita's leg, looks at her, raises her eyebrows. “I was bored,” she says, “I wanted a change of scenery.” She links their arms without another word and drags Rita along, despite her limping and struggling, and there's one good thing about all of this – that there's so much chaos already, like a child sobbing hysterically in his mother's arms because 'Kevin destroyed my sandcastle, mom!' and an equal amount of people relaxing (sunglasses on, blocking out the sun and sights, or face down on towels as they're tanning, or nose-deep in books or phones) that no one pays attention to them as they pass.

At the end of the shore, away from everyone else – and it takes some time to get there and Rita is exhausted by the time their trek is done – Flit plops down in the sand, apparently unbothered by the fact that it's hot out and she's wearing many layers of black clothing.

“Come on,” she says, pats the sand expectantly. “Sit with me.”

Rita doesn't know what else to do, and though it does occur to her to argue and protest and insist on going back home where she _belongs,_ she knows it's likely Flit will teleport her out into the sea instead, so she breathes in the salty air and sits, easing her fingers in a rough, clumsy massage down her knee until the rest of her leg begins to straighten out, forming proper again.

She realizes then that it isn't so hard to breathe anymore, and she glances at Flit from the corner of an eye.

“I never knew you liked beaches,” she says.

“Forty-nine of us don't,” Flit says, shrugging.

Rita hums noncommittally in the back of her throat, watching the waves wash in and out. Now that she's calming she realizes that she's in a dress, and there's sand everywhere, which means there'll be sand everywhere on _her_ when she gets up, but she's already sitting and it isn't quite so uncomfortable just yet, so she stays. It isn't like she'd be able to go anywhere if she wanted, anyway. Flit does what Flit likes, they all know that by now – and if Flit wants to stay on a beach for a while, they're going to do that.

Rita takes the risk, once her breathing has calmed enough that her heart has stopped pounding and her brain has stopped racing quite so quickly. She leans back on her palms and looks to Flit. “Will you tell me what the others won't?”

“No,” Flit says, instantaneous and easy, not hard but stern in a way that makes Rita feel like she's done something awful, something wrong and hideous, and that's a terrible feeling and she can't stand it.

“Why _not?_ Cliff is worried, you know. And, frankly, so am I. I think we both deserve some answers from _one_ of you. It's very cruel to—“

“Shh.”

“Wh—what—did you just _shush_ me?”

“Yeah,” Flit says, not looking at her. “I did. You aren't getting any answers from me. Shut up and watch the sunset.”

“There isn't a sunset.”

Flit raises her shoulders dismissively. “There will be. Eventually.”

Rita sighs. Grumbles. Complains under her breath for full, long minutes, none of which become the minute that Flit starts paying attention to the displeasure that she's trying to make _very clear._

Then, because it's too late to do anything else and she's so tired and she feels like she's been wrung out and hung on a hook, left to slump over in on herself again and again in a pile of dreadful, twisty emotions, Rita lays back on the sand and watches the water.

At the end of the day, when she's finally dozed off into that warm sort of half-sleep to the sounds of seagulls and children's laughter, Flit leans over and taps her on the arm.

“Mm. What is it now? Have you finally decided to take me back?”

“No. Look.”

Rita opens her eyes. “Oh,” she says, a little surprised. It hadn't felt like that long but they've been here for a few hours now, surely, because just as Flit promised the sun is beginning to set, casting orange and purple hues over everything. It's all huge stretches of color that open along the sand and sky and water, glistening and beautiful.

“Better, right?”

“What?”

“You feel better. Right?”

Rita sniffs haughtily, standing and brushing herself off as best she can. These stockings are ruined now, they really are, and the dress isn't much better, and – God, her _hair._ “No less concerned for your well-being, if that's what you mean, and if that makes me some sort of awful criminal then so be it—“

“Jesus,” Flit says, climbing to her feet languidly. “Don't be so dramatic. At least eleven of us appreciate your concern. The others just don't give a shit. Don't take it to heart.”

Before Rita can say a word about that, like how offended she is that even though she's known Jane and her many, many facets for this long, none of them care that she's _worried_ about them and would rather drag her along on pointless endeavors to boardwalks, Flit is teleporting them again.

She lands safely, mouth open to speak, in the middle of her bedroom.

Flit, of course, is nowhere to be seen.

  
  


**v. jane**

  
  


After all the nonsense with the Decreator, and the Recreator, and— _ugh_ —the cult, Rita holes herself up in her bedroom for a good four days.

She deserves it, this downtime, after all this _stress._ That's what she tells herself, and not even Vic tries to dissuade her, doesn't come knocking once – and she knows why, he's having his own troubles, just like the rest of them. It would be nice, though, if someone...

If someone were to try—

Oh, who is she kidding? If anyone tried getting her out of this room they'd be met with stony silence, and everyone in the manor knows it. That's why they leave her alone, except to knock when they deliver her food. Piles upon piles of meat and pasta and bread and everything doused in butter and garlic and sweet syrups and jams and it would make her sick, if only it didn't fill and sate that ravenous need that was always inside of her. As it turns out, seeing so much food grouped together on one tray that threatens to bend under the pressure doesn't make you so ill when you're so _hungry._

But she's known that for a while now.

For the first twenty-four hours, it's easy to fool herself, to think that maybe it's just taking a while for Elliot to return, and he will eventually, and they'll be able to fix things with him. She'll be able to help him. Properly, this time, and no stupid giant eye in the sky will be able to make him vanish again.

Twenty-four hours becomes forty-eight hours, and none of the glances she takes out of her window show her anything but the empty yard, and the empty sky which somehow looks a lot stranger without the eyes in it, if not very comforting. The bench she'd sat on with him not that long ago remains empty, and each night she retires to her bed and feels herself slump down over the edges when she relaxes the tension in her bones, and each night she feels absolutely disgusted with herself.

All is normal again, really.

Of course. It couldn't last, could it. She does one good thing, the first good thing she's done in such a terribly long time, and the universe just has to take it away from her. She was silly, really, to expect anything different.

She's on the last picture she made before the incident when the knock comes in the morning, on the fourth day. She had forty-four credits to her name when it occurred and thirty-two of them are pictures that she'd been the titular or main star of. She only really watches those, nowadays, but for this occasion and because she can't stand to watch it, she avoids the ones in which her characters have something awful happen to them, like death or ruination or broken hearts.

So thirty-two turns to nineteen.

It's troublesome that she ends up not remembering some of her lines – or worse, remembering them _incorrectly._ She's always so good with it but then her thoughts will stray to Elliot, or the Chief, and then she'll have to pause because she's too busy trying to hold herself together. Quite literally, most of the time.

“Hey,” Jane calls, muffled behind the door. “Rita, you awake? I got your breakfast. Hellooo? Rita? What the fuck are you doing in there—“

Rita sighs, stretches. It feels like stretching, anyway, but really the bottom half of her just leaks down the foot of the bed and trails onto the floor. “Leave it outside,” she says, voice half-muddled with the way the flesh of her jaw begins to slip.

There's silence, then, and just when she thinks she's been left alone again, the doorknob rattles, clicks – and the door opens.

It isn't that Rita isn't very used to this by now. Jane and all her many personas have a tendency to undersatnd the slightest thing about privacy, or how the invasion of it is bad, but at least Jane understands that there are some things about Rita she wants _no one_ to see, and this is one of them.

Not today, apparently. Oh, no, today Jane is feeling very invasive and very cruel, because she stops in the doorway and raises her eyebrows at Rita, who struggles to hold herself together as best as she can. It isn't working, mostly because she's goo from the waist down and a little bit from the head up, too, and the more she struggles the worse it becomes.

“You look like shit,” Jane says.

“Please get out,” Rita says, trying to come across as cold and aloof rather than like she's splitting apart at the seams, the way she feels. She doesn't think it works, especially when Jane's brows furrow and she steps closer into the room rather than out, cradling a tray stacked high and heavy with cold cuts in her arms.

She sets it down—on the ground by the bed, of all places—and then perches on the edge of the mattress—a very small sliver of it, seeing as Rita is taking up most of it—and slaps at her arm, which is beginning to melt into everything else. “Budge over,” she says.

Rita blinks up at her. “What?”

“Move. Over. Jesus, Rita, there's not much to unpack there, is there? Come on. Move your ass.”

It feels very surreal, all of it, but Rita finds herself obeying anyway – pulling herself up with clumsy fingers, leaning there on a wavering elbow for a moment as she does her best to make herself more _normal,_ or at least a bit smaller. It surprises her that it works a little, but Jane doesn't seem like she expected anything less by the time Rita is mostly herself again and moving over to make room. Jane flops there in the empty space, sprawling out with her limbs everywhere – a leg thrown over Rita's foot, an arm nearly hitting her face when it falls between them.

Rita stares at the ceiling, and Jane stares at the ceiling. Her stomach growls once or twice, but the tray is far away and—and...

“I have no idea what is happening right now,” she says, just to make sure Jane knows that.

Jane nods, pats her hand. “I know. Hey.” She sits up and leans over to get the tray, dropping its heavy weight on Rita's lap after. “Eat up. Larry's having freaky possession issues again and he couldn't cook, so I just slapped some shit together from the fridge. Even went out and got you some of those crackers you like.”

“Is he all right?”

“What?”

“Larry. Is he...”

“Yeah, yeah. He's fine. Probably. But focus on yourself. You got issues, too.”

“Here I thought I was being subtle,” Rita says dully, slightly pleased to earn a short peal of laughter from the other woman. It's ever so rare, after all.

“Yeah. Not so much.” Jane shakes her head. “Look, I know you don't like eating in front of people when you aren't feeling good, so I'll leave. I just wanted to say sorry. About what happened. With your, uh, dead friend or whatever. It's shitty.”

If Jane were anyone else Rita would be more _offended_ than anything – it's not exactly gentle, definitely not what she wants right now, but it's honest. Genuine. Even very sweet, in her own way.

“Oh,” Rita hears herself say, blank with surprise. “Thank you. I...think. What about you and Cliff? Are you two still...”

Jane shrugs, not looking at her. “We'll see. Baby steps, right? If you're feeling better later, you should come down. We can watch one of your mov—sorry, _pictures._ ” She drawls the word the way everyone thinks Rita does, all exaggerated and uppity, and Rita can't help but to wrinkle her nose, which is probably Jane's intended effect. “And then I have something to talk to you about. The others, too. We can have one of those stupid...team meetings or whatever Vic calls them.”

“Briefings.”

“Whatever.”

“Fine, yes, _maybe._ I'll see if I'm feeling up to it. Otherwise you can just have your little...meeting without me.” She tries her best, but the thought aches anyway – the thought of not being included.

Jane must see it, somewhere on her face or in her eyes, because she rolls her eyes. “No,” she says, “it involves all of us. Don't worry, I can wait. Not like someone else is going to try to cause the Apocalypse again anytime soon. Unless I just jinxed us, in which case, fuck. And also, we'll all be dead, so who gives a shit.”

“Fine. Fine, I'll...be down. Later. Now shoo.”

“Shooing,” Jane says, and rolls out of the bed.

Rita squeezes her eyes shut. _Breathe. Say it. Just say it, you silly, stupid—_ “Jane?”

Jane pauses in the doorway, steps back and turns to look at her curiously. “What's up?”

“Thank you.”

“Ew. Don't get all sappy on me out of nowhere.”

Rita sighs. Of course Jane would say something like that, breaking this frankly rather peaceful moment by – by being _Jane._ She's just about to say something rather spiteful when she sees it, a flash in Jane's eyes to go with the way she lingers, her mouth twitching very faintly at one corner.

 _Oh,_ Rita thinks slowly, and with an understanding dawning at the corners of her mind.

“Well,” she huffs, straightens her blanket and finally makes a move for the tray of food, “next time I just won't bother, then.” She smiles to soften her words, the way she knows Jane might want to do the same with her own but just be completely unable to. It's understandable – she doesn't have a lot to smile about, the poor thing.

(None of them do, but Rita doesn't want to think about that.)

Jane shakes her head bemusedly, doesn't say another word as she closes the door behind her.

Rita eats, and watches herself in the mirror. Her face is perfect again, and that's always the most important part, regardless of whether or not she'll be able to keep her legs the same when she stands.

When the tray is empty, it takes all of her to brave everything that is outside of her bed, but she manages it. She showers and dresses, puts her best and most pleasing lipstick on in front of the mirror, makes sure her hair is perfect and that there's no chips in her nail polish. She picks out a pair of kitten heels, because her legs are still feeling a little weak, and stares at herself until she's sure she isn't about to morph into a blob.

“The person who is breathing is me,” Rita says, to herself and to the silence around her. _The person who is breathing is me._ She steps from her room, closes the door securely behind her, and takes the stairs down one at a time, hand on the railing.

 _Baby steps,_ Jane had said.

Rita thinks she might prefer that to the usual mantra.


End file.
